News, politics, insights, inside information from the left

Main Menu

BBC still silent on Corbyn’s peace award – or awards

On Friday, Jeremy Corbyn received a landmark award from the International Peace Bureau, the Campaign for World Democracy and the city of Geneva. It was Corbyn’s second major international award for peace (he received a Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award in 2013). He received it jointly with world-renowned philosopher, author and political activist Noam Chomsky.

The BBC, in common with almost all the ‘MSM’, did not mention it.

At all.

The SKWAWKBOX’s was the first to publicise the news – and our article on the award went viral, such was the obvious public interest and the public’s appetite for the information.

However, the UK’s state broadcaster remains resolutely silent on the issue. In most cases of items that the BBC opts not to cover on its news channel, the corporation opts for a small mention on its news website. But apparently not in this case.

A search of the BBC News website for ‘Corbyn Peace Prize’ (or ‘award’) and similar variations returns the following result:

Interestingly, those results also show that the BBC never reported on Corbyn’s 2013 Ghandi award either. Of course, in 2013 Corbyn was a little-known Labour backbencher so it’s perhaps understandable that it wasn’t considered a news item.

But the leader of the UK’s official opposition and holder of an 8-point voting intention poll lead over the government receiving an international peace award alongside one of the world’s foremost philosophers and authors? Hard to argue that’s not worth at least a mention in some corner of the BBC News website.

The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This blog is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.

I suggest an email campaign direct to the head of news or feedback.
Feedback on a blatant omission of an important news story would be a first. Then again the first rule of the British Bigots Club propaganda arm is to bury or ignore any achievement by the enemy within.
There must be some way for ordinary people to raise this issue of blatant bias at the BBC. Please help point me in the right direction as I am getting more and more grumpy about it.

It is important to take into consideration that the BBC are effectively the political wing of the Tory party. As we have seen in many previous examples, Jeremy Corbyn or any of his associates have minimum coverage or appearances on the BBC.
Should Corbyn ever be become Prime Minister he should have a major clearout of many of the journalists’ in this propaganda machine.

Why the heck do we pay for a tv license
when all we get is
right wing crap?
i watch bbc once a week just for pmq
and nothing else….
Am sick of their biased crap & no coverage
of labour’s achievements..
No coverage of the 1000s of people who had died because of this governments
so-called reforms and austerity…
And their lies blatant out & out lies
They don’t even care that they’re lying
its become the norm now as everyone has
got used to it..
The sooner they’re out the better..

In the 80s when Arts for Labour was active we won many changes in BBC coverage WHY IS THERE NOBODY to do the same now.
We have made several hundred formal documented complaints BBC no answers not a suitable use of public money formal complaint to the BBC Trust who made then answer us to no avail as we were sent the same formal non answers again and again we gave up SACK the lot

And it’s an utter waste of time complaining to the BBC as all you will get is a lame excuse like this:

Dear Mr Carter

Thank you for contacting us regarding our recent news coverage.

We understand that you feel there has been insufficient coverage of Jeremy Corbyn’s speech at the UN on Friday 8th December and insufficient coverage of him being awarded the Séan MacBride Peace Prize.

Many speeches and award ceremonies take place around the world every week. We decide which ones to cover on a case by case basis, taking into account their strength as a news story relative to the day’s other events. There will sometimes be disagreements about whether we should have covered certain stories, and the prominence we give to others, but we’re sorry you were disappointed that we did not report on this particular event.

Please be assured that your comments have been passed to the News team and we appreciate the time you’ve taken to get in touch.

That’s a complete cop-out by the BBC Complaints Team.
By any standard, Jeremy Corbyn’s speech at the UN on Friday 8th December was powerful, persuasive and statesmanlike. It has been widely applauded by many . Coupled with his award of the Séan MacBride Peace Prize it is more than enough to make him eminently worthy of coverage by the BBC.

Apparently this prize has very rarely been covered by the national media before; I don’t think that the BBC is systematically biased against Jeremy Corbyn. Drop your pitchforks! 🙂

People say that the right on purposely claim that the BBC is biased to the left in order to disguise its bias to the right. I’m sure the right then purposely claim that the BBC is biased to the right in order to disguise its bias to the left. To me, it seems that the BBC is just not all that biased. Maybe a tad in favour of the status quo, which people here would think is ‘right’, but I think that should be expected for general media and shouldn’t be excessively ridiculed.